The ‘Golden State Killer’ evaded arrest for more than 40 years but DNA testing led to a breakthrough

Joseph DeAngelo’s six-year career as a police officer came swiftly to an end after being arrested for shoplifting a can of dog repellent and a hammer from a Pay N’ Save store in a Sacramento suburb in 1979.

Authorities are now wondering if the items he snatched were intended as tools for the sinister rash of crimes he is suspected of carrying out.

DeAngelo, 72, was accused on Wednesday of being the “Golden State Killer” who terrorised suburban neighbourhoods in a spate of brutal rapes and slayings in the 1970s and ‘80s before leaving a cold trail that baffled investigators for decades.

He was charged with eight counts of murder in three counties after being linked to the crimes through his DNA. Authorities said he was responsible for a dozen slayings and some 50 rapes and that other charges could be filed.

Most of the crimes, predominantly sex assaults but also two slayings, occurred in the three years he was an Auburn police officer in the Sierra foothills outside Sacramento.

The attacks on sleeping women – and sometimes their partners – in middle and upper-middle-class subdivisions east of the state Capitol shattered an innocence where people didn’t lock their doors and children rode bicycles to school and played outside until dark.